Permanent links
Daily links
3 February 2004
Herman Wouk at Caltech
As part of the James Michelin lecture, Herman Wouk conversed with Kevin Starr today at the Beckman Auditorium. Herman Wouk was born to Jewish immigrants in New York in 1915. At 89 years, he is remarkably active and articulate. A flyer noted that he lives a secluded and disciplined lifestyle comprising of trail climbs, writing and studious research into Judaic studies. He has just released "A Hole in Texas", a satiric piece on space science in the US and its quirky patrons: the government. His other major books are "The Caine Mutiny" (a copy of which I possess but decided not to have autographed by him) and "Marjorie Morningstar". "The Caine Mutiny" was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart and fetched him the Pulitzer Prize. An interesting anecdote related with the book was when Mr. Wouk accosted Charles Laughton, the great British thespian and subsequent Hollywood actor, and narrated to him the court-martial scene to which Laughton responded quite well and suggested in his British accent that it needed a first act (I can visualise Laughton saying with a phlegmatic grimace "Splendid, my dear chap! Now, surely you must have a first act!" nudging his sentence out as he wheezes with his eyes half-closed).He credited his literary heroes as Mark Twain and Alexandre Dumas. His own writing spell began when he was at sea serving under the US Navy. As for his influences, he attributed his grandfather: a rabbi, his philosophy professor at Columbia and the US Navy. In point of fact, two of the principal characters in "The Caine Mutiny" were based on his professor and a captain he served under. At my writing class, Merrill read out the first chapter of "Marjorie Morningstar" and all of us seemed to concur that the writing was not polished or eloquent but rather simplistic, almost paperbackish; employing very trite devices to move the plot ahead. This was also evident in the first few chapters of "A Hole in Texas" that Mr. Wouk read out to us today. But that is perhaps why his novels are so widely appreciated and read for they eschew richness and depth for detail and plot.
A pivotal theme in all his books as he spoke of them, seems to be the changing face of the Jew in America. "Marjorie Morningstar" tells of the ambitions of a young Jewish girl wanting to become a Hollywood star forewarning the molting of the Jew as he shed a conformist and, to quote Mr. Wouk, "exotic" persona and embraced the so-called American ideal. Even so, books like "The Caine Mutiny" and "War and Remembrance" (which he described as his attempt to write a "War and Peace" of the Second World War) depict in minute detail the glories and scars of war. Mr. Wouk's research for his books ran into several thousands of pages and are now preserved in the Library of Congress. As a writer adhering to populist fiction, Mr. Wouk has also had quite a number of his works translated to the silver screen.
The session itself was a lively one with Mr. Wouk displaying his modesty as he called himself a mere "gag-man". He spoke about the different stages of his life starting with his star-crossed adulation for Mark Twain, the war and his subsequent involvement with Zionism and religion. And there was the obligatory reference to the Superbowl Half-Time incident. When Prof. Starr questioned why his books were branded as historic romance although they seemed to deal with issues more grave, Mr. Wouk acknowledged that romance in those days was a much-feared word, a condemnation rather. In his words, it consisted of "a busty woman, a brawny man, lots of gasping and aahing, ripping of bodices.." at which point the rather ticklish audience (whose average age of sixty the seven of us from writing class could make no dent into) let out another protracted bout of slow but incessant laughter. As if the joke were not obvious enough, Prof. Starr remarked "Sounds like Superbowl" to which Mr. Wouk pleaded with his audience "This was not planned" which pricked the collective funny bone.
